MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has advised all universities in Tamil Nadu to formulate a system to ensure that distance education students study their respective courses for at least 10 months before appearing for their year-end exams.
Justice S Srimathy said this after finding out that the practice of having two admission cycles calendar year (January to December) and academic year (June to April or May) has created confusion among candidates and recruiting agencies. The judge faulted universities for allowing students, who enrolled late, to complete their first year within two months of joining the course.
The judge made the observations while granting relief to M Senbagam, a candidate who was not selected by the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) for the post of a mathematics teacher in 2017 as the board mistook that she did parallel degrees.
The petitioner completed her B Ed degree in May 2013 and thereafter joined M Sc (Mathematics) in August 2013 in Periyar University through distance mode under the ‘calendar year’ system, which starts in January and ends in December.
Since the university, due to low student strength, that year had obtained permission to enrol students till October 2013, she was able to get admission in August. But the admitted students, including those who enrolled in October, were allowed to appear for the first-year exam in January 2014 itself, the judge noted.
“Generally, students will be admitted in the month of June and the examination would be conducted next year in March or April, and they would have attended the course for at least 10 months. Students should be allowed to write examinations only after completing 10 months of the course,” she observed and advised all universities to formulate a new system which fulfils the above condition.
She also urged universities to mention the duration of courses clearly while issuing course completion certificates to students, as one of the causes for the petitioner’s predicament was her educational certificates which indicated as if she obtained her M Sc and B Ed degrees in the same year. The judge later directed the authorities to grant an appointment to the petitioner within a month.